Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and a handful of Congressional colleagues, who are service veterans, issued a video last week directed at active service personnel. Their message was simple and true: officers and soldiers need not follow illegal orders. They pledged loyalty to the Constitution, not to Donald Trump. In fact, their message was consistent with the training U.S. military personnel have always received.
So, all the breathlessness about it on the hard-right, including Trump’s typical screed that they should be executed, is ludicrous. Where do Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth get off fuming about the Constitution and good order in the military when they have done the following things?
- Ordered the military to destroy some two dozen boats in the Caribbean, claiming that these vessels were being operated by drug smugglers. Even if that assertion — for which the administration and the Defense Department have offered no evidence — is true, this isn’t the kind of mission that the U.S. military should be carrying out. And what if they were wrong? What if those boats were being operated by innocent people or if innocent people were among those on the boats?
- Federalized National Guard troops and ordered them into U.S. cities — all governed by Democrats — allegedly to quell violent crime, which in most cases is actually on the decline.
- In his first term, former Trump chief of staff John Kelly (no relation to Mark) blasted his former boss for calling soldiers “losers” on multiple occasions: “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them,'” Kelly said of Trump. “A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
- A few months ago, Trump and Hegseth ordered all top military commanders around the world to Washington for an unprecedented meeting, the purpose of which was to make the point that they were to be loyal to Trump, not to the Constitution. That’s my interpretation, but since the meeting had little else in the way of substance, it’s pretty clear to me that this was exactly the message that they intended to send.
- Trump himself was a draft dodger. His father paid a doctor to substantiate a bogus claim of bone spurs to keep him out of Vietnam.
And this is the guy who has the gall to call Mark Kelly a traitor?
Now, I do think the video itself was ill-advised. The legislators would have been better off issuing a written statement. That is more dignified. I guess the video message thing is a millennial deal, but I don’t much like it. Its slick production distracted from its serious and legitimate point.
But that’s a detail. Kelly and his colleagues were right and it was a message that needed to be issued right now. There’s simply no question that Trump and Hegseth are trying hard to turn the military away from the Constitution and toward loyalty to Trump as a dictator. It’s clear who the real heroes and patriots are.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Oh great now every dipshit private is going to become an armchair constitutional law scholar and refuse to follow orders. Thanks Kelly!
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I think their message was directed at their commanding officers, essentially telling them that some people in power will have their back if they feel they have to reject an unlawful order. Most of the “dip shit” privates love Trump.
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The only ones guilty of treason are Trump’s followers for their attempts to try and overturn the election. It’s a sign of how broken are democracy is that any of them walk free.
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The mere fact that Kelly and the others are going to be investigated for exercising their 1st amendment right is a travesty. There should be consequences for TCF, full stop.
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This is really sticking in my crawl so I’m not done. Your post wasn’t strong enough for what’s going on here. Democracy is on the line this can not stand. One side is demanding absolute loyalty to a autocratic draft dodger. The other side was reminding the military that America is a democracy and no president or Secretary of Defense gets to give illegal orders. They take an oath to defend the Constitution not a person or king. They recited the basics of what every member of the military is taught early on during their training. TCF’s reaction to the video proves exactly why Kelly’s and the others message was necessary. Hopefully TCF will regret the day he came for these patriots.
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“This is really sticking in my crawl so I’m not done.”
Ah, the Toothless Tempest of the Uniformed; hope there’s room in your crawl (sic) for this:
(bolds/caps/italics mine throughout) “Former JAG here–I’ve taught the Law of Armed Conflict and Operational Law to active duty special operators at one of our special operations schools, as well as advised on use of force to some local commanders. A couple of observations:
“I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but this appears to be some kind of shaping operation directed at not just the President, but members of the armed forces. The original report of this incident was back in September in a publication called “The Intercept.” That report lay dormant until the National Lawyers Guild, a far left legal organization, published an information piece on the military’s obligation to disobey “unlawful” orders, on November 11. The tendentious video by the six congressmen followed shortly thereafter, followed immediately by the posting of billboards outside several major U.S. military installations urging soldiers to question the legality of their orders. This was immediately followed by the pick-up of he Intercept story and its publication by the corporate press. Draw your own conclusions.
“A key point in this discussion that seems to have been omitted by most if not all commentators is that we are engaging our military forces against a state-sponsored narco-terrorism operation. The Maduro government is supporting, sponsoring, and profiting from drug importation into the US, and is working hand in glove with Venezuelan cartels. In other words, this is not a law enforcement operation but rather a state-versus-state confrontation involving what are effectively unlawful combatants on one side.
“Unlawful combatants do not have the same protections under the laws of war that regular forces do. But there are still some universal principles that apply to US forces, mainly on the basis of US adoption of these principles in either military law, Rules of Engagement, or in the US Code.
“One of these principles is that individuals engaged in combat operations, lawful or not, are not to be the object of attack if they are trying to surrender, wounded such that they cannot further engage in combat operations, or otherwise in a helpless position.
“The same prohibition does not apply, however, to the means of combat operations, specifically equipment and logistical support. There is, at least to my understanding, no prohibition on a policy of sinking enemy vessels or destroying enemy logistics, by appropriate and proportionate means. And while the likely injury or death to individuals in the vicinity of legitimate targets may be a consideration, it’s not a prohibition.
“I should note that we still don’t have a complete picture of every circumstance surrounding this operation and are unlikely to get one because of the classified nature of our intelligence gathering that provided context to the decision to undertake this attack. But I can tell you that nothing like this is undertaken without significant effort spent on assessing the legality of the action, and would be lawyered from the very top on down. I’m also confident that a bald order to kill survivors clinging to a wrecked boat (versus an order to completely sink any target and destroy any associated cargo) would almost certainly be challenged at multiple levels down the chain of command.
“Finally, I’ve had the pleasure of getting an order from the Secretary of Defense overturned and declared unlawful through litigation. I WOULD NEVER USE A PUBLIC FORUM TO IMPLYU GENERALLY THAT ORDERS COMING FROM THE PRESIDENT ARE ILLEGAL AS THESE IDIOT CONGRESSMEN DID. TO DO SO IS CONDUCT DETRIMENTAL TO GOOD ORDER AND DISCIPLINE.”
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